Rain and Shine

Hey all!  My final paper for class was due on Wednesday which is why I didn’t get some of these pictures up earlier.  Last weekend it RAINED!!!  Seriously I have never seen rain that hard last that long—it was both impressive and a little annoying!  But it finally dried up early in the week and gave us a couple of nice, sunny days this weekend.  Now that the rain has stopped, it definitely feels like summer here; it is hot and humid!  Hence, you can count on seeing a lot of beach pictures for a while.  I plan on keeping my pregnant belly submerged in the ocean as much as possible this summer :)

Back to last weekend though . . .

We couldn’t keep Logan cooped up all weekend, so Jake put him in swim trunks and a rain jacket and sent him outside to play in the flooded driveway.  Logan loved it!

The drainage ditch on the edge of the neighborhood, which normally has a creek perhaps six inches to a foot deep, was at least six feet high and overflowed its banks.

Of course, with all that rain we spent a lot of time inside, playing in Mom’s boots,

playing in boxes,

and reading books.

When the weather finally did clear up, we were able to get out to a park with our good friends Carol and Daniel.  This is the best shot I was able to get of the boys together.

Saturday at Tropical Beach.  Okay, so I don’t exactly look pregnant, but I certainly don’t look like my normal self.  The contrast between the tan shoulders and legs and the pale belly is pretty fabulous though, don’t you think?

Logan spent some time just relaxing in the sand.

We were back at the beach on Sunday, but that turned out to be something special and merits its own entry—coming very soon!  Until then, g’night all!

Fun new stuff

We are up to two cars again.  We decided we would need another one when the new baby came—too hard to coordinate transportation around multiple nap schedules—and, although we could have waited several more months, a SSgt in Jake’s office was PCS’ing and had this one for sale at the right price.  Voila, new car for us!

  
New clothes and footie pajamas from Aunt Sarah (G)—thanks!

New bakery find—yumm!  We got all this for only 1050 yen (about 11 dollars)!  There are certain things I am REALLY going to miss about Oki when it’s time to leave, and good bakeries and pastry shops are right at the top of that list.

New cooking skills.  Logan is helping Jake make lasagna.  :)

On a side note, the lasagna was for a church function.  Every six months or so, the church organizes get-togethers at people’s houses.  They try to match you up with other families that they think you may not know or not know well.  With two services and so many people in and out through the military, it’s a fantastic way to build community in the church and it’s just a lot of fun.  So anyways, we hosted one of the gatherings this time and one of the other ladies at our house was visibly pregnant; so of course we got talking about that and I made a comment about how practically everyone I know is pregnant right now.  Then, looking towards the other couple that was over, I kind of motioned and paused, not wanting to make an insensitive joke, when they spoke up and, lo and behold, she is pregnant too!  It’s getting to be utterly absurd; I swear EVERYONE is pregnant right now! 

  Speaking of pregnancy, we had our ultrasound today.  This one is just as wiggly as Logan was; the ultrasound tech tried to get a nice profile shot but had no luck.  Here the baby’s head is on the left, looking straight into the camera, appearing rather alien.  The various small balls/circles below are mostly just umbilical coils, but there’s a hand and a knee in there if you can make them out.

  Here are baby’s hands and forearms (on the left again), along with one foot visible on the bottom right (next to an odd bubble that I assume is more umbilical cord). 

In the category of tiring, old news: it’s STILL raining.  Apparently the last two months of rain were unusual and we are only just now entering the real rainy season!  I’m not sure how much more of this we can take.  Hopefully Hawaii, DC, NY and NC are saving up some sunshine for us!

Fields of Gold (and white, and pink)

Spring is quickly rolling into summer here and Golden Week (four holidays between April 29-May 5) kicks off the beginning of festival season.  We decided to start things off by heading out to Ie Island (a new one for us) to check out the Lily Festival.

Logan riding the ferry.  He looks pretty complacent because he’s just woken up from his nap in the car.

This is what greeted us when we got there.  Fields of flowers, ocean views and little old ladies with parasols (love Japan!).

Here we are!

 

Logan found a hole in the rock/sign and was having a grand time playing peekaboo.  On a side note, “hole” is one of Logan’s new words, along with “razes” (raisins), “pie” (up high), and a bunch of animal sounds.  He also says “way” and, although it sounds the same, it definitely has two meanings in his world, either “away” (as in put something away) or “oui” (yes in French).

Most of the afternoon went about like this: Logan dug in the dirt and made friends with the Japanese folk while Mommy took pictures of the flowers and Logan; Daddy chased both of us around until we stopped long enough to take this picture!

This was one of Logan’s friends from the ferry ride on the way home.  His name was Jenki and, as you can see, he admired Logan’s blond hair.  Logan mostly admired Jenki’s snacks!  (How do you teach a child not to mooch when all the Japanese people are so eager to share with him?)

Dragon boat races are on Wednesday, but they are down in Naha and traffic/parking gets pretty crazy so I’m not sure yet whether Logan and I are going to attempt it.  It depends on what kind of a mood I’m in . . . either way, I’ll have more pictures for you soon!

Blossoming

Hey all,

       We were busy with church stuff most of the past weekend—although I should have brought the camera for the beach baptisms; it was such a gorgeous day—but I still have last weekend’s pics from the Botanical Gardens to show you.  Also, I am officially 20 weeks as of today.  Halfway through!  Yes, I know I don’t look 4 1/2 months pregnant; I don’t feel it either.  Honestly, it seems a little bizarre to me that I’m as far along as I am.  It seems to be going by very quickly this time around.  Anyways, see for yourself:

Not much of a belly, but I am in maternity clothes.  When you look at me straight on from the front (or the back, I suppose), you basically can’t tell at all, unless you happen to know me well enough to notice that my “waist” has shifted upward about two inches to the bottom of my ribs.

Here’s the arm-accented view.  You see the bulge now, don’t you?

We got a toilet seat for Logan.  We’re not really potty training yet, but recently he’s picked up on the words “potty” and “poo”; he likes to watch us use the toilet and he’ll usually let me know after he’s pooped in his diaper.  Judging by this picture though, it seems he’s not quite got the concept yet.

Now on to the Botanical Gardens . . .

We found a very small butterfly garden that we didn’t know was there before!

Jade vine flowers.

I thought this one was interesting because of the way it grows in a spiral.  No idea what it is though.  SG?

Logan gets a geometry lesson on a stone lantern.

Those crazy, crazy fish!

Water lilies!  As it turns out, this is only the very beginning of water lily season though.  There were already plenty of blossoms and a lot of different varieties, but when they really get going the whole lake will be covered in them.

  I love how the late afternoon sun made this almost black-and-white.

That’s all for now folks!  Have a wonderful day.

Splashin’

We found a cool new place to play in the water this afternoon.  It was brutally hot (mostly because it was simply the first really hot, humid day we’ve had and so we haven’t gotten used to them yet) but we needed a good outing to round out our trip to the farmer’s market.  Kurashiki Dam hit the spot!

We ended up exploring the dam itself for a while even though that was not our goal.  The shallow inlet were kids can play was on the opposite side of this little isthmus.  I thought we were going to melt before we found it!

We did find this in the meantime though!

But we did eventually get to the area we were looking for.  The water was SO refreshing!

There are these two tiny waterfalls, as you can see, and then a very shallow stream leading under a bridge and into the reservoir.  It’s a great little spot, perfect for toddlers.

This looks down on the whole kids’ river section.  The “waterfalls” come out through a tunnel/culvert/spout/thing at the bottom of the hill I’m standing on and you can see the little bridge in the distance.

On a side note, the farmers’ market was fabulous as usual.  Fresh passion fruit, vegetables fresher, tastier and half the price of the commissary, homemade sponge cake, even fresh herbs.  I got small new potatoes and green beans for dinner tonight, and dill, lemon and garlic for the fish . . . the fish that I was supposed to buy at the fish market on our way home but they were sold out!  It seemed a shame to put fresh dill on frozen salmon but it tasted good anyways!

And that (plus a good workout this morning and a decent nap for both Logan and Mommy) makes for one very good day!

Quiet Times

Love these new pajamas on Logan, the style reminds me of Ricky Ricardo!  He’s looking very Linus here with BedBear and Blankie (trailing behind him).

Love at first sight!  The lamb Grammie sent for Easter has been added to the bedtime stockpile and he’ll frequently ask me to give Lamb a kiss too when I put him down for bed/nap.

Earlier this week, it was too nice a day to stay inside so we had a picnic lunch in the backyard and snapped this pic in the hammock.

Same afternoon, Logan actually posed for a picture for me!

They put in a fancy new sign at the zoo.

Lilies are just starting to bloom.

It was definitely springtime at the zoo!  Several animals that you don’t normally see out of the water were enjoying the sun, and several other animals were . . . enjoying each other.  The turtles made a loud grunting noise that scared Logan!

We bought some food to feed the fish (and the swans) this time and Logan thought it was hilarious.

A couple of shots from today, when all we did is hang around the house and enjoy the nice weather.

And that’s all for now folks.  I’ll get you a belly picture someday when I actually have a belly to show off; right now I’m just getting to the “looking-chubby” stage!  Hope you’re doing great!